Current Interest

Description: A candid new political memoir from Senator John McCain--his most personal book in years--covering everything from 2008 up to the present.

Description: A memoir about a young girl who, raised by Mormon survivalists in the mountains of Idaho and forbidden to go to school, defies her family, educates herself, and earns degrees including a PhD from Cambridge University.

Description: A memoir about the author's difficult relationship with her father, Steve Jobs.

Description: Something is going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and afraid to speak honestly. Lukianoff and Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: what doesn't kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths are incompatible with basic psychological principles, as well as ancient wisdom from many cultures. They interfere with healthy development. Anyone who embraces these untruths--and the resulting culture of safetyism--is less likely to become an autonomous adult able to navigate the bumpy road of life. Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to produce these untruths. They explore changes in childhood including the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines.

Description: The highly respected judge and host of "Judge Jeanine Pirro" shares some of the most outrageous falsehoods she has seen behind the high-profile issues and narratives depicted on her show.

Description: Jon Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in our history when hope overcame division and fear. Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and he shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the "better angels of our nature" have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of presidents including, besides Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson, and illuminating the courage of influential citizen activists, Meacham brings to life turning points in American history. In each of these dramatic, crucial turning points, the battle to lead the country to look forward rather than back, to assert hope over fear, was joined, even as it is today. While the American story has not always been heroic, and the outcome of our battles never certain, Meacham reassures us, "the good news is that we have come through darkness before"--as, time and again, Lincoln's better angels have found a way to prevail.-- From statement provided by publisher.

Description: Based on years of original research and new reporting, Vincent and Vladi deliver the full story of the worst sea disaster in United States naval history: the sinking of the USS Indianapolis during World War II--and the fifty-year fight to exonerate the captain after a wrongful court martial.--From statement provided by publisher.

Description: The inside story of the rise and shocking collapse of a multibillion-dollar startup. In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes had created a startup "unicorn" that promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood tests significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at $9 billion, putting Holmes's worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. The problem: The technology didn't work. For years, Holmes had been misleading investors, FDA officials, and her own employees. Here is the story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a cautionary tale set amid the bold promises and gold-rush frenzy of Silicon Valley.

Description: Beginning with a single dealer who lands in a small Virginia town and sets about turning high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics, journalist Beth Macy seeks to find why a grieving mother's only son died--and comes away with a harrowding story of greed and need. From the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, America embraced a medical culture where overtreatment with painkillers became the norm. The unemployed use painkillers both to numb the pain of joblessness and pay their bills, while privileged teens trade pills in cul-de-sacs, and even high school standouts fall prey to prostitution, jail, and death. Macy covers deeply human portraits of the families and first responders struggling with this epidemic, each facet of the crisis coming into focus.

Description: When asked simple questions about global trends -- what percentage of the world's population live in poverty; why the world's population is increasing; how many girls finish school -- we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. Professor and TED presenter Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective, from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don't know what we don't know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn't mean there aren't real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most.

Description: "Almost 2.5 million Americans have served in Afghanistan or Iraq since September 11, 2001. C.J. Chivers has reported from both fronts from the beginning, walking side by side with combatants for more than a dozen years. He describes the experience of war today as it is endured by those most at risk--the camaraderie and profound sense of purpose, alongside courage, frustration, and moral confusion mixed with technical precision. In these remote places where the reason for their presence is sometimes not clear, these young men kill or are killed, facing palpable and often constant threat of ambush or hidden bombs. They repeatedly return, rushing toward danger, often to rescue the wounded in wars that escalate around them as the Pentagon changes doctrines and plans. Weaving a history of the war through troops' experiences, the characters in The Fighters climb into an F-14 cockpit for the opening strikes after the attacks of 9/11, hunt for Osama bin Laden along the Pakistani border, chase insurgent rocket teams with helicopters alongside American bases, face snipers in a hostile city in Anbar Province in Iraq, and engage in deadly counterguerilla warfare in the soaring mountains of the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. Some suffer terribly. All are changed. They return home, uncertain of their place in the world and what their wars have achieved. Chivers accompanied combatants over many years and multiple tours, including many of the characters in this book, developing deep understanding of the experience of combat in our times. The Fighters, his tour de force, tells a history of America's longest wars as well as the lives of the volunteers who have waged them"-- Provided by publisher.